Today

He never let me look into his eyes. I kept trying to read into them ... eyes that were as deep as the sea, what did they conceal within the waves? I was perhaps looking for some tangible yet unseen emotion that I sensed from him. Whenever we talked, he never looked in my eyes. Once I playfully told him “I seem to have caught something in my eye. Can you please help?” He blew gently in my eye and looked away before I could look in his eyes.

Whenever we met he used to talk about his work, his schedules, his family, his aspirations ... But whenever I asked him about myself he would just lock his words away within himself. Despite that I enjoyed spending time with him. It was not what we talked about but rather his company that mattered more to me. At times just sitting beside someone is quite fulfilling in itself. A conversation then just becomes a mere accessory to that sense of company.

One evening when we met near the seashore and walked away our discussions of a mundane daily routine, I suddenly slipped and fell. He sat down immediately beside me, touched my ankle and looked into my eyes to ask me “Are you ok? Hurt?”

Yes, finally he looked in my eyes and so did I. And what I saw lifted me and placed me high among the stars ... My heart leapt so high that it felt as if I had crossed oceans in that one single leap. But then it dawned upon me ... his reluctance to express and confess. Our nameless relation didn’t have any tomorrow to it. It was beyond a conclusion ... without a future. And with that realisation I fell in the deep abyss of truth and inevitability.

He now looked away. But I had already seen what I needed to see. We sat quietly beside each other. We may not have a tomorrow with each other but we decided to make the best of today anyway.